Merc's Useful Tools of the day

[Mercutio]

As I recall it's most useful if you use it on new installs. I'm not actually sure how helpful moving My Documents and My Images are since I hardly ever write data there to begin with, but I know a bunch of crap gets written to a user's temp folders on an ongoing basis no matter what.

There are other ways to move Users/Docs and Settings, but they're scary low-level hacks. Probably the easiest thing to do is to make a custom install disc that specifies the different location in the first place. nlite lets you do that with XP, at least.

 

[Mercutio]

unetbootin + bootable .ISO file = Bootable thumb drive.

 

[Mercutio]

Movie Explorer grabs movie rip metadata from imdb for people who don't have other tools for doing that. It's a work in progress but I can see how it might be handy.

 

[CougTek]

unetbootin + bootable .ISO file = Bootable thumb drive.

Similar tool : Universal USB installer. I haven't created a boot drive with it yet, but it seems pretty nifty.

 

[Mercutio]

Handy article from Lifehacker: What the hell is a codec?

Someone asks me that at least once a week.

 

[ddrueding]

unetbootin + bootable .ISO file = Bootable thumb drive.

For reference, download the ISO yourself first. I had a high failure rate of the files if I let the app do the download, but it worked fine with images I'd gotten independently.

 

[Mercutio]

Insanely useful thing: Restore dozens, possibly hundreds of Windows settings to their default values. All in one shot if need be.

 

[MaxBurn]

Interesting. If that worked on server editions it would be pretty useful, but still. ..

 

[Mercutio]

A couple random things:

1. Enable Dreamscene on Windows 7. One of my students asked me where it went since it was a big special feature of Vista Ultimate.

2. Soft2Base. Kinda like Ninite, only there's no restriction on commercial use. Interestingly, the authors support the Firefox Adblock (but not Adblock+) plugin directly, but this tool doesn't support any PDF reader but Acrobat.

 

[Handruin]

Thanks for the info. I had never heard of Dreamscene before now.

It's nice to see software like Ninite that has no commercial restriction. I'll have to check it out for use with some of my templates at work.

 

[Handruin]

Actually, I just looked on their about page. They have this message:

Soft2Base is freeware for individuals and testers.

Please contact us before any usage in any company or business.

http://www.soft2base.com/about

 

[Mercutio]

Dammit. That should be plastered all over their main page.

 

[Mercutio]

Last night I decided I wanted to have all the episodes of "My Drunk Kitchen" on one of my tablets and available offline. So I went and looked, and sure enough, someone makes a tool for that. It's called Bytube, the Bulk Youtube Downloader. Bytube is a Firefox add-on that works with either directly downloads all the videos on a Youtube page or generates links that can be fed to a download manager like DownThemAll.

I installed it and had all 2.7GB of content with something like three minutes of mousing. Not bad at all.

 

[ddrueding]

Useful tool. Funny videos. Awesome post.

 

[Mercutio]

That's kind of a killer toolset for tablets, actually. You can get some pretty serious video content up and running on your 64GB device at whatever quality level is appropriate and it's all legal to grab it.
I haven't found anything that does Vimeo playlists, but Vimeo is actively hostile to downloaders in the first place so I'm really not surprised about that.

EpicMealTime, Jenna Marbles and Action Figure Therapy are also on my list to snag.

 

[Mercutio]

While I was looking in to MSVPC on Windows 7, I found this nifty little tool: XP-More, which allows users to quickly duplicate and manage Virtual PC VMs. Interestingly, it's hosted on Microsoft's Codeplex site, which means that Microsoft is at least theoretically aware that one of its uses is to distribute extra-legal copies of XP.

 

[Mercutio]

Classic Shell for Windows: A skin-able app that allows users of newer versions of Windows to revert to the appearance and UI widgets of previous Windows versions. Want Luna or Aero on Windows 8? Missing the Up button on the Explorer toolbar? Here's the fix.

 

[CougTek]

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it in the Windows 8 thread as it is the program I use to make Windows 8's interface usable.

 

[Mercutio]

OK. All credit to Coug for that one.

 

[CougTek]

Build me a monument.

 

[Handruin]

Build me a monument.

I can't wait to see how it would turn out. Merc, please don't disappoint.

 

[Mercutio]

OK. Given the materials at my disposal, it will be made of cat hair and occupy a central location on the shelf above my monitors.

 

[LunarMist]

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it in the Windows 8 thread as it is the program I use to make Windows 8's interface usable.

I just started using Win 7 on my personal machines and that Classic Shell is an excellent app. :beer:
I only wish it could decrease the space between the file lines in Detail view.

 

[LunarMist]

OK. Given the materials at my disposal, it will be made of cat hair and occupy a central location on the shelf above my monitors.

I thought it would be a tall spindle of numerous platters from WD drives, with the larger ones on the bottom and the smaller ones on the top.

 

[Mercutio]

omfg it's about goddammed time. Fanboy's Ad-blocking list for IE9+. Also: IE10 for Windows 7 was released today.

 

[LunarMist]

omfg it's about goddammed time. Fanboy's Ad-blocking list for IE9+. Also: IE10 for Windows 7 was released today.

Is IE 10 as blurry as 9? I had to revert to IE 8 in Win 7 to prevent dizziness and headaches.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm not sure I've purposefully run IE for any length of time longer than it takes to download a Ninite Executable in the last few years. Asking how one version is different from another at this point is like asking which is my favorite strain of bird flu.

 

[Mercutio]

Install XP from a Flash Drive

 

[Mercutio]

DVDflick: OSS/free video file to DVD converter.

 

[Mercutio]

It's a little more work, but any machine with IE8, 9 or 10 can now get the same Ad-blocking as Adblock Plus using Tracking Protection Lists.
Easylist + Fanboy's list is equivalent to what I set up on Firefox and/or Chrome.

That's a big, huge step forward for IE and it's about goddamned time.

 

[Mercutio]

Ninite stopped being useful last week. It no longer supports single click installs for Flash. You're OK if you use Chrome or if you're using IE under Windows 8, but everyone else has to get Flash from Adobe, which means either dealing with crapware bundling or knowing the specific, hidden place on Adobe's shitty website to get a crap-free installer that you're technically supposed to have a license to even use.

 

[CougTek]

Thanks for finding the page and linking it here. In the last few months, I've took the installers from www.majorgeeks.com. They are there too.

 

[Mercutio]

Ever had something that's all kinds of useful sitting right under your nose?

On any Windows 7 machine, there's a folder located in

%windir%\System32\Printing_Admin_Scripts\

that is just chock-full of hilariously useful VBscripts that work on EVERY version of Windows.

In particular,

Cscript "Prnport.vbs" -a -r PRINTERNAME -h PRINTERIP -o raw -n 9100
Cscript "Prndrvr.vbs" -a -m "EXACT_MODEL_FROM_INF" -i INF_LOCATION.INF -h PLACE_WHERE_DRIVERS_ARE
Cscript "Prnmngr.vbs" -a -p "FRIENDLY_WINDOWS_NAME" -m "EXACT_MODEL_FROM_INF" -r IP_PRINTERIP

IP Printer management is a huge pain in the ass, particularly for XP machines, so this is all kinds of helpful.

 

[Mercutio]

Zorn Software's Win Library Tool allows easy modification of Windows library locations for times when Microsoft's own tools for doing so are inconsistent in scope or behavior.

 

[Mercutio]

WPKG is software distribution service that allows Windows clients to download and install software from a locally managed server.
It works without needing Active Directory and the server component runs on both Windows and Linux.

 

[Mercutio]

Metamorphose is a pretty sweet and user friendly file rename tool.
Space Sniffer is a handy update to my old friend SpaceMonger.

 

[Mercutio]

Sagethumbs is a handy-dandy Windows add-on that enables previews in Windows Explorer for a wider array of file types than the stock picture viewing tool. In particular, it can make thumbnails of .PDF and .EPS files. It's also agnostic of your underlying default viewer, which means that you can use Picasa or Foxit or XnView or whatever when you actually choose to open the file.

 

[Mercutio]

I'd never heard of the Windows FOREACH command until this morning. It's one of those ridiculously useful scripting tools that keeps someone from having to reinvent the wheel.

forfiles /p "C:\somedirectoryr" /s /m *.* /d somenumberofdays /c "cmd /c somedoscommand @path"

e.g.

forfiles /p C:\dbbackups /s /m *.bak /d 30 /c "cmd /c del @path"

To delete .bak files more than 30 days old recursively through the dbackups folder structure.

Needless to say this is ridiculously handy.

 

[Howell]

What does the foreach command do?

 

[Bozo]

I have been running [ Forfiles /p "J:\Junk-Sec" /s /d -30 /c "cmd /c del @file" ] from task scheduler to clean out 'Junk-Sec' of files older than 30 days.Works great.